When Does the Human Drift from His Own Center?
This book is the second of the six-book Balance series: Measure · The Human · Breaking · Meaning · Life · The Center. The books refer to one another; it is best to read them in order.
The forming of the self
The book Measure began with a scale. A scale set up in the sky and on the earth, existing before the human. This book is the story of another scale: The scale within the human.
When a baby is born, it knows no boundary between itself and the world. Its mother's voice, the warmth of the milk, its own hand; all are parts of the same whole. Studies of child development show that children usually realize the image in the mirror is themselves somewhere between a year and a half and two years of age. Seeing in the mirror a mark rubbed on its forehead, the hand goes not to the mirror but to its own forehead. In that moment a small thing happens and a great thing begins: The child says "I."
Saying "I" is not a loss. A person who cannot say "I" cannot take responsibility, cannot give his word, cannot love either. To love, there must first be someone. The self is a ground on which the human can stand in the world.
But ground and center are not the same thing. The ground is where you stand; the center is where you turn. The self is given to the human as a ground. When he mistakes it for the center, the scale slips for the first time.
The multiplying of wants
Needs have a limit. The thirsty one wants water; when he drinks, the thirst ends. The hungry one wants food; when he is full, the hunger falls silent. The body knows what it wants, and knows when it will be enough.
Wants work otherwise. Psychologists describe this as "hedonic adaptation": The human soon grows used to a new gain, the joy it brought soon becomes ordinary, and his eye slides to the next one. A bigger house, a faster car, more likes. Each step turns into the threshold of the next. The ladder always goes up, yet the human always feels himself at the same height.
Our Beloved Prophet fits this state into a single sentence:
If the son of Adam had two valleys full of wealth, he would want a third. Nothing fills the inside of the son of Adam but dust.
al-Bukhari, Riqaq 10; Muslim, Zakat 116
Dust is the human's last stop. The hadith says that wanting will not stop of its own accord. It must be stopped. Wanting that is not stopped leaves the human only at the edge of the grave.
The race for more has distracted you; until you reach the graves.
At-Takathur 102:1–2 (translation)
The boundary between need and desire
In ancient Greece, Epicurus divided wants into three: those both natural and necessary, those natural but not necessary, and those neither natural nor necessary. Bread belongs to the first group. A delicious meal to the second. Fame and display to the third. The real counsel of this man, known as the philosopher of pleasure, is surprising: The one who knows how to be content with little is the one who best enjoys plenty too.
The boundary between need and desire is sought not in a thing's existence, but in its measure. Food is a need; when its measure slips, one becomes a glutton. Shelter is a need; when its measure slips, the race for palaces begins. Even being appreciated is a need; when its measure slips, the human begins to live in the eyes of others.
Eat and drink, but do not waste. For Allah does not love the wasteful.
Al-A'raf 7:31 (translation)
The verse does not forbid eating, does not forbid drinking. It draws the limit. The human's drifting from the center rarely begins with a great deviation. It begins with a small "a little more."
The Qur'an describes the deepest form of this drifting thus:
Do not be like those who forgot Allah, so that Allah made them forget themselves.
Al-Hashr 59:19 (translation)
Whoever forgets his center forgets himself too. Here is the secret of this verse: The more the human seeks himself within himself, the more he loses himself. Finding oneself is possible by turning toward a center greater than oneself. The leg of the compass stands not on the surface of the paper, but at the center.